AppDirecthttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/appdirect
en-usFri, 09 Dec 2016 11:17:35 -0500Fri, 09 Dec 2016 11:17:35 -0500The latest news on AppDirect from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-raises-140-million-valued-at-1-billion-2015-10Investors pour another $140 million into a 'middleman for the cloud,' 7 months after its previous raisehttp://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-raises-140-million-valued-at-1-billion-2015-10
Wed, 07 Oct 2015 07:00:00 -0400Matt Weinberger
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54da9d116bb3f70e230952d0-4256-2832/daniel saks and nicolas desmarais_appdirect_photo credit san francisco business times_spencer brown.jpg" alt="AppDirect cofounder Nicolas Desmarais and Daniel Saks" data-mce-source="AppDirect" data-mce-caption="AppDirect cofounder Nicolas Desmarais and Daniel Saks" /></p><p>AppDirect, a San Francisco-based startup, has raised $140 million in a round led by a fund advised by JPMorgan Chase.</p>
<p>That round values the company at $1 billion as it furthers its master plan to be the middleman of choice in the exploding cloud-software business.</p>
<p>This big round comes <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-mithril-doubling-down-leads-50-million-investment-in-appdirect-2015-2">only seven months after AppDirect raised $50 million</a> in a deal led by Mithril Capital Partners. That investment valued the company at $600 million.</p>
<p>And the reason for that ballooning valuation is simple, says AppDirect co-CEO Daniel Saks, who cofounded the company back in 2009.</p>
<p>"Everybody wants to make money in the cloud, and everybody wants to be productive," Saks says.</p>
<p>The AppDirect business is rooted in acting as kind of an App Store for the enterprise-software buyer. Businesses are turning to the cloud, where software and services are delivered over the internet via the browser or mobile device, to reap cost savings and enable their workers to be more productive anywhere.</p>
<p>When a company goes to buy a cloud-based business tool &mdash; such as the kind sold by companies like Box, Salesforce, or even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-scores-office-365-contract-with-ge-2015-7">Microsoft</a> &mdash; they might turn to a third-party implementation partner, almost like a contractor for enterprise IT infrastructure.</p>
<p>And that partner will be using AppDirect to resell a catalogue of pre-vetted cloud services at a markup, or so AppDirect hopes. Customer probably won't even know they're using AppDirect.</p>
<p>"We're pretty under the radar," Saks says.</p>
<p>As with Apple's App Store, an AppDirect listing can extend a company's reach well beyond what Saks describes as the Silicon Valley brand of early adopters.</p>
<p>People in tech-savvy industries and urban centers, like San Francisco or New York, are quick to be the first to adopt new tools like Slack or Zenefits. But elsewhere, lots of customers depend on their relationships with those third-party implementation partners to advise them on which software to buy and when.</p>
<p>"They've been having a really hard time embracing the cloud," Saks says.</p>
<p>With AppDirect empowering those partners, customers "have any business software at their fingertips," he says. Those resellers have access to a wider range of products, those developers get more customers, and AppDirect takes its cut of the sales price.</p>
<p>The next stage is to grow this out globally, with AppDirect investing in enhanced presences in Europe and Asia. Plus, because AppDirect works with all of these different software products, it's in a unique place, technologically speaking. So the next stage for AppDirect is to further its efforts to act as a bridge between those apps, letting developers share data among them.</p>
<p>And no, AppDirect isn't profitable, but Saks says that's because the company is looking to build on its subscriber base that already stands at 1 million. And it has the capital right now to last the long haul while it focuses on growing its top line.</p>
<p>Foundry Group, iNovia Capital, Mithril Capital Management, StarVest Partners, and Stingray Digital all participated in this round. To date, AppDirect has raised $245 million.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-jira-splits-core-jira-service-desk-jessica-alba-2015-10" >One of the most successful business apps in the world is splitting into three</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-raises-140-million-valued-at-1-billion-2015-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/60-seconds-with-peter-tuchman-2013-6">60 Seconds With The Most Recognizable Broker On The Floor Of The New York Stock Exchange</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-raises-50-million-from-peter-thiel-2015-2This Harvard grad couldn't find a job on Wall Street so he launched his own startup — it's now worth $600 millionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-raises-50-million-from-peter-thiel-2015-2
Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:00:00 -0500Eugene Kim
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54da9d4fecad04936cd4d6b0-1200-924/appdirect-cofounder-nicolas-desmarais-and-daniel-saks.jpg" border="0" alt="AppDirect cofounder Nicolas Desmarais and Daniel Saks">When you have a Harvard degree in accounting and finance, you would think it would be a cakewalk to find a job on Wall Street.</span></p>
<p>That wasn't the case for Daniel Saks, the 29-year-old cofounder and co-CEO of AppDirect, a cloud marketplace and management platform.</p>
<p>When Saks got his master's degree from the Harvard Extension School in 2009, he tried to get a job at a bank like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, but he never received an offer. It was the recession, and jobs weren't opening up.</p>
<p>Things were starting to look bleak. Saks' only work experience at the time was an unpaid summer internship at a small firm in San Francisco. Worse, his family’s 100-year-old furniture business had just shut down because of the recession.</p>
<p>"Life was pretty grim," Saks tells Business Insider.</p>
<p>With no job and his family business going under, Saks needed time to clear his mind. He decided to go on a trip to see his old family friend Nicolas Desmarais, who was in San Francisco doing consulting work at Bain &amp; Co.</p>
<p>At about that time, Saks was also starting to think about launching his own business. He always admired his father's entrepreneurial spirit and felt as if running a business was in the family. He just couldn't figure out what exactly he wanted to do.</p>
<p>Desmarais at the time had large tech-company clients who were looking for ways to upgrade their infrastructure and cloud offerings. So he was aware of the industry's shift to cloud software, or software offered through the internet. And as Saks bounced around ideas with Desmarais, it became clear that if he were going to start a company, it had to be in cloud software.</p>
<p>"We realized cloud computing could completely change the way businesses operate," Saks says. "It could have even saved my family's business."</p>
<p>Saks spent the next five months finalizing his business plan. He also persuaded Desmarais to quit his job to work full time on the new startup. Desmarais' mom was disappointed that he was leaving his lucrative consulting gig, but the two went on to cofound AppDirect in 2009.</p>
<p>AppDirect is now the backend software powering the marketplaces of many companies. It basically builds an app store for its clients, much like iTunes or Google Play, but only for business apps. It provides a white-label marketplace for companies like Samsung or Rackspace, so those companies could rebrand it as their own marketplace. For example, Samsung has its own Samsung KNOX marketplace, and Rackspace runs its own Rackspace Marketplace, where apps optimized for their respective platforms are sold to clients. Both marketplaces use AppDirect's technology.</p>
<p>The idea of AppDirect may sound simple, but companies have to spend a lot of resources to build up app stores on their own. Although some companies like Salesforce have the capacity to build their own, many businesses prefer outsourcing to companies like AppDirect. It also gives AppDirect's clients the ability to curate and monitor the apps sold on their marketplaces, giving complete transparency over use of the apps.</p>
<p>The business has been doing quite well. More than 20 million people are using AppDirect's service so far, including employees at big enterprises like Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, and ADP. Its revenue has been doubling for the fourth straight year and reached $18 million last year.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, it announced another round of funding at $50 million from investors including Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan's growth-stage venture capital fund Mithril Capital Management. Saks told us the company was valued at roughly $600 million, double its valuation from last year.</p>
<p>"AppDirect opened a new market for software makers by helping small businesses find software and use it well," Thiel said in a statement.</p>
<p>Saks says AppDirect expects to continue doubling in size (both in revenue and employees) in the foreseeable future. It already has offices in San Francisco, Munich, London, and Montreal, but Saks plans to keep expanding with the new funding.</p>
<p>Desmarais' mom is also convinced. After AppDirect signed on Bell Canada, one of the biggest companies in Canada, she told him, "If you signed on Bell Canada, then sure you can go start this business."</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-raises-50-million-from-peter-thiel-2015-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/evantubehd-youtube-star-evan-toys-unboxing-2015-2">This 9-year-old makes $1 million a year opening toys</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-series-a-marketplace-2012-7 AppDirect Raises $8.5 Million And Opens Up Its Marketplace http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-series-a-marketplace-2012-7
Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:31:00 -0400Andrea Huspeni
<p><a href="http://www.appdirect.com/"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5005b9da69beddf56300000c/daniel-saks.jpg" border="0" alt="Daniel Saks" style="float: right;" />AppDirect</a>, an online marketplace that manages and provides cloud based tools for businesses, just announced it has raised $8.5 million in funding.</p>
<p>The startup has also teamed up with <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a>&nbsp;to launch its Cloud Tools Marketplace, which will now provide the hosting company with a virtual store for cloud software.</p>
<p>The Series A funding was led by <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/inovia-capital">iNovia Capital</a>. It comes a little over a year after AppDirect raised $3.25 million in seed funding.</p>
<p>AppDirect plans on using the funds to grow partnerships and help the company "become the leader in the cloud services brokerage space," president and co-CEO Daniel Saks said in a statement.</p>
<p>&ldquo;When we founded AppDirect, our mission was to change the way that businesses find, buy, and manage cloud-based software, and I'm proud of the progress we've made in such a short time. But, we're just getting started,&rdquo; said Saks. &ldquo;This funding not only validates all of the hard work we've put into the platform, but also helps us continue to innovate on our products in new and exciting ways to make them even better.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Since AppDirect landed its seed investment, the company has struck partnerships with companies like Deutsche Telekom. It has also been able to bring <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google">Google</a>, DocuSign, New Relic, and SendGrind to its network.</p>
<p>AppDirect is excited about collaborating with <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/rackspace">Rackspace</a> to provide cloud applications to over 180,000 of the hosting companys customers.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The Cloud Tools Marketplace is a great example of what can happen when two innovative technology leaders work together, and we&rsquo;re thrilled that our platform not only makes it easier for Rackspace customers to find and manage the cloud-based solutions they need, but also raises the bar for cloud service marketplaces everywhere,&rdquo; Saks said in a statement.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Customers on Rackspace just need to search for products and look at reviews and ratings in order to see if the products is a good fit.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&ldquo;At Rackspace, we're known for our commitment to our customers, and the Cloud Tools Marketplace helps us take that dedication to the next level,&rdquo; said Ven Shanmugam, senior manager of corporate strategy at Rackspace, said in a statement.</p>
<p>Check out screen shots below:</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5005b8c6ecad04937800000a/rackspace-and-appdirect-screen-shot.jpg" border="0" alt="Rackspace and AppDirect Screen Shot" /></p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5005b8f86bb3f70726000002/rackspace-and-appdirect-screen-shot1.jpg" border="0" alt="Rackspace and AppDirect Screen Shot1" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/appdirect-series-a-marketplace-2012-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>